By Mesha Mittanasala | Photographer
Bo French, we are not a problem.
On September 13, Bo French posted on X an image of UT Students celebrating a victory at a University of Texas versus Austin vs Ohio State football game with predominately South Asian students, captioned, “I heard UT graduation this year looked like this. I didn’t believe it. The problem is now obviously far worse than anyone imagined.”
Bo French is a Republican running for a seat on the Texas Railroad Commission for this year’s midterm election.
According to the Indian American Impact, Texas has close to 1.9 million Asian Americans. As of 2022, Indian Americans make up the largest portion at 32%. Texas has been a prominent state for South Asians to thrive and pursue their American dreams.
As children of South Asian immigrants, we grew up watching our parents build a new life in an unfamiliar country while navigating language barrier, understanding a new culture and living with the uncertainty of a visa approval and immigration statuses from U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS).
An unspoken responsibility fell upon us to be successful in making our parents’ sacrifices worth it.
That pressure followed us as we entered high school and university. As first-generation and minority students, we often found ourselves in classes where nobody else looked like us. Feelings of isolation and imposter syndrome are constant in our experiences as we encounter a lack of mentorship, lack of representation of professors and faculty and stereotypes against us.
As a South Asian Texan at Baylor studying political science, economics and ethnic studies, I am often one of the only South Asian people in my classrooms and extracurriculars.
I have had to navigate how to establish a career without having any connections. I have had to wrestle with my internal imposter syndrome on pursuing a career that falls outside the South Asian stereotypes. I’ve had to deal with the fact that no one in my classes or any of my professors can understand the unspoken pressures of being a daughter of an immigrant.
I am very proud of my South Asian identity and my ability to traverse through all the hurdles I have gone through. However, a X post from someone in a position of power targeting students that look like me undermines all our experiences.
Bo French’s comments follow a mindset discussed in Heather McGhee’s book titled “The Sum of Us.” The Zero-Sum game is a phenomenon that if things are getting better for a marginalized group of people, it must be at the expense of other groups of people.
Truthfully, when progress for one group expands opportunity for everyone begins. We can build stronger economies, schools and society through supporting every community.
It’s not a problem that there are South Asian students in universities. Every South Asian student in that photo is a student that has made many sacrifices and has come from a family that has made an enumerable number of sacrifices. Everyone’s chance to pursue the American dream should be celebrated, not shot down.
South Asian Americans are as American as anyone, and South Asian Texans are as Texan as you are, Bo French.
